Niger: IMF approves $71 million disbursement

Niger will receive new loans from the IMF to undertake reforms to reduce risks to prospective balance of payments stability and resolve its protracted balance of payments problems.

The Executive Board of the IMF completed Wednesday the Fourth and Fifth Reviews of Niger’s economic and financial program supported by the Extended Credit Facility arrangement (ECF), and the First Review under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility arrangement (RSF).

The completion of the reviews allowed for the immediate disbursement of SDR 19.74 million(about US$ 26 million) under the ECF—bringing total disbursements under the arrangement to SDR 157.92 million (about US$ 210million)—and of SDR 34.216 million (about US$ 45 million) under the RSF.

Niger’s ECF was approved on December 8, 2021 and complemented by the RSF in July 2023. The two arrangements were extended by six months until December 2025 to ensure sufficient time to implement key reforms and support the authorities’ fiscal consolidation efforts.

Program implementation was broadly on track in late June 2023 but was disrupted by the nation's political crisis which led to "the accumulation of external and domestic debt service arrears."